Victoria Meniakina (LT, 1988) is a researcher, educator, and consultant with a background in architecture. She began her career as an architect, working in Amsterdam and New York City, before completing an MBA in strategy in Paris, which shifted her focus toward helping architects run more sustainable and ethical practices. As a co-founder of Agency Agency — strategy & design consultancy — she works with design and architecture studios as well as cultural institutions to define and communicate the philosophy behind their work.
Victoria teaches at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where she works with architecture and design students. Her course, Reality Check, guides architecture and design students through collaborations with real-life clients and design assignments, as well as supporting them to position their practices within the professional field.
Her research brings together architectural history and theory, environmental philosophy, and artistic research methods. As part of her research project at the Deep Futures Research Group, she studied the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam, uncovering its histories tied to colonialism and exploring alternative knowledge systems embedded within the site that could contribute to ecological awareness. This work led her to create a course called Entangled Practices, where students use methods like listening, mapping, and collaborative design to rethink humans’ relationship with nature. The course culminated in an exhibition at the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam (2024).
Victoria’s interests extend into different approaches to share research, from exhibitions to digital and physical publications. She believes in making architectural and artistic research more accessible and engaging.
Research, Teaching and Lecturing
→ Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK)
→ Deep Futures Research Group at the Design Lectorate
→ Architectural Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam
→ TARR Third Cycle in Artistic Research at the Rietveld
→ Her Salt Voice Institute
→ Critical Earth Browsing, Singapore
→ Institute for Postnatural Studies
→ School for Multispecies Knowledges
→ COVEN at Sandberg+Rietveld
→ LAPS Research Institute for Art and Public Space
Strategy
→ Agency Agency
→ List of Selected Clients
More Info & Contact
More Info & Contact
Research Notebook